Endless (Shadowlands) (9 page)

“If you’re bringing me up here to kill me, I’m going to be really pissed off,” I said, pressing one hand on the flimsy wall beside me as the tower above the library swayed in the wind. I swore under my breath as the entire thing leaned to the left. Overhead, the huge, two-ton bell creaked ominously on its hinges.

“Rory, you keep forgetting,” Joaquin said from the winding stairs just below me.

“I know, I know. We can’t die,” I said through my teeth. “But you’d think that would negate this serious need I have to murder you right now.”

Joaquin laughed, and even with all the vertigo, the sound warmed my heart. “Just keep going. You’re almost there.”

I held my breath and climbed the last five rickety steps to the very top of the bell tower. Tall arched windows looked out in every direction over the island, and a two-foot-wide plank walkway circled the opening under the bell, which stretched down the ten stories to the floor of the building far below. My heart pounded from the climb, from the height, and from the whistling wind that seemed to blast through every one of those windows at once. I gripped the brick casing on the nearest opening and braced myself, trying to release the fear.

“What’re we doing up here?” I asked finally. I eyed the bronze bell as it swayed, thinking of the last time it had rung.

A quick flutter of guilt flashed in Joaquin’s eyes, but then it was gone. He walked to an east-facing window and sat down. “We’re taking a break,” he said matter-of-factly. “This is where
I
come when I want to get away from everything. Check it out. You can see every bit of the island from up here.”

I took a deep breath and looked out the north-facing window next to me. Sure enough I saw the bridge off in the distance, the cliffs from which my Lifer friends had jumped on the night they wanted to prove we couldn’t die, and several beams of light bobbing around on the northeast shore. A search party. They were still looking. Always looking.

“Cool, right?” Joaquin said.

“Yeah.”

I sat down next to him and our knees touched. I didn’t pull away, like I would have a week ago. There was something comforting about being this close to Joaquin. And at the same time something daring. I looked up into his eyes, and he stared straight back into mine until I blushed. Then we both smiled and looked out the nearest window. My knee was on fire. Never in my life had I ever thought I would be so focused on my knee.

“It’s the highest point in Juniper Landing.” Joaquin leaned toward me, bracing one hand beside my hip and pointing past my shoulder. I felt his arm graze my neck, and his breath tickled my skin. “Look.”

I turned my head, my heart pitter-pattering crazily, and spotted the mayor’s house. Sure enough, we were higher than its tallest point—the weather vane, which was still pointed south.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but this is usually a nice place to live,” Joaquin said quietly. “It’s all sun and surfing and swimming during the day, then music and partying and hanging out at night. It’s peaceful, usually. Zen.”

I looked up at him, wanting to believe it. Willing, in that moment, to believe anything he said.

“Just…not since you’ve been here,” he said.

I snorted a laugh. “Thanks.”

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’d go back and have you
not
come here.” He shifted and laid his arm lightly across my shoulders. Suddenly I felt a few things acutely. The breeze brushing a lock of hair against my cheek. The warmth of his skin against mine. The grain of the wood planks beneath my fingertips.

“So you’re happy that I’m dead?” I joked, trying to lighten the moment.

He caught my hand. He wasn’t going to let me make a game of this. “Yeah,” he said. “I kind of am.”

My heart thumped as he leaned toward me. Alarm bells went off in my head and throughout my body. This was Joaquin. Tristan’s best friend. Darcy’s former crush. He wasn’t really going to—

And then he was. His lips touched mine, and he slipped his hand down my back, pulling me closer to him. I could do nothing but respond to his kiss. Suddenly I
wanted
to do nothing but respond to his kiss. And for minute upon blissful, endless minute, that’s exactly what I did.

Until finally, unfortunately, he pulled away.

Joaquin stared into my eyes. I searched his, trying to find a name for what I was feeling. Trying to understand what this was, what it meant. What the hell were we doing?

Then, ever so slowly, he smiled, and I realized I didn’t care. What mattered was that this felt right. It felt good to be with Joaquin, his arm now around my back, his comforting, musky scent enveloping me. I leaned contentedly into the crook of his shoulder.

“Look,” he whispered, kissing the top of my head. “You can even see your house from here.”

I tilted my head half an inch. Out on the ocean, three surfers in black rash guards bobbed on the choppy whitecaps. I wondered whether they were Liam, Lalani, and Nick, making good on their date with the waves.

“No. There.”

Joaquin gently turned my chin, and sure enough, there it was. Past the quaint, rain-slicked shops of downtown and the colorful trim of the Victorian houses on Freesia Lane stood the pretty little yellow house on Magnolia. It was so bright and cheerful against the miles of grayness it seemed as if nothing bad could ever happen under its roof. There were the upper eaves under which my wide bedroom sat, and there was Darcy’s window, and there was the house across the street where Tristan used to sit and keep watch for the girl whose heart he was planning to break. The girl he simply couldn’t stay away from.

My pulse stopped racing. I felt as if I’d just tripped and landed in one of the deeper puddles marring the park. The girl he couldn’t stay away from.

Suddenly I was on my feet. The journal. He’d said that it was too painful to be gone from my side for even a minute. And the other day, I’d thought I’d seen a light but brushed it off as a trick—as distant lightning in the sky. Could it be that simple?

“What?” Joaquin asked, staring up at me.

“When was the last time anyone searched Magnolia?” I asked.

He lifted his shoulders, the light dying from his eyes. He didn’t want to leave this place yet. He wanted to be with me. And he could tell I was about to run. “I don’t know. Last night? A couple of days ago? Why?”

“I have an idea,” I said, trying to ignore the pang in my heart. Trying to focus on the positive. “I think I know where Tristan is.”

“Park here,” I said as Joaquin turned Tristan’s Range Rover up Magnolia Street. We had borrowed it from the mayor’s house because we would need the backseat if we found Tristan and Nadia, and Joaquin’s pickup had only the cab. I didn’t know whether it was poetic or plain cruel that Tristan would be brought to justice in his own car. Joaquin hit the brakes, and they squealed. “We don’t want them to see us coming.”

“Good call.” Joaquin shoved the gearshift into park. His fingers balled into fists atop his thighs. I knew the feeling. The tension in the air was so tight I felt like if I moved, the whole world would shatter. If I was right, we were about to find Tristan. I had to believe it. My hope was the only thing I had left.

Bea pulled her Jeep up behind us, and her headlights momentarily filled the SUV before she doused them. Night was starting to fall, but with no sign of the sun, evening didn’t look much different from day. Everything was just a darker, murkier shade of gray. I glanced in the side mirror as the doors of the Jeep opened with a muted pop. Five hooded figures piled out and flanked our car.

I rolled down my window as Joaquin did the same. Raindrops slipped along the inside of the car door. Fisher, Kevin, and Cori were on my side, Bea and Lauren on Joaquin’s.

“You really think he’s in there?” Fisher asked, gazing off toward the house in question.

“I refuse to believe it,” Lauren said, her lips pinched. “The searches have been so organized. There’s no way he could have been hiding right under our noses all this time.”

“Not all this time, but maybe in the last day,” I said. “At least, that’s what I’m hoping.”

“Let’s get this over with.” Kevin cracked every one of his knuckles, one by one.

“My thoughts exactly.”

I opened my door, forcing Fisher, Kevin, and Cori to step back. As my feet hit the sidewalk, I saw a tall figure approaching us from the bottom of the hill. For a second I thought it might be Liam, but then he looked up and Pete’s pale skin practically glowed from under his hood.

“What’re you guys doing?” he asked.

“We’re checking the gray house for Tristan,” Kevin said, putting his arm around him. “Let’s go.”

“The more the merrier,” Joaquin said flatly.

We moved together down the sidewalk. I kept one eye on the front door as we approached, in case someone tried to make a break for it. We passed by Bea’s house—a tall white colonial about five doors up from our target—and could hear Bea’s insane charge, Tess, screeching from the fourth-floor window. The sound coiled my shoulders, and I looked at Bea. Her face was a freckled mask underneath her black rain hat, the area under her eyes puffy and dark.

“Don’t even say it.” She sighed and shoved her hands deep into her pockets, hunching away from Tess’s window. We really had to get the dark souls off the island. One more reason to finish this thing.

Suddenly, the door to the house next to the gray one opened, and out stepped Sebastian and Selma. Everyone on the sidewalk froze. As they walked down the front path toward us, their eyes slid over us like scanners, the movement so in synch and unnatural they could have been twin automatons. It was eerie.

“What were you doing in there?” Joaquin asked.

“This is the house we were placed in,” Selma said in her thin, high-pitched voice.

“They placed you here?” I blurted. “I didn’t know there were any boarding houses on this street.”

“There are now,” Lauren said under her breath.
Now
meaning
now that we’re so overcrowded
.

The two of them glared at me with their light blue eyes. “There are people here who don’t trust you, you know,” Selma said. “Any of you.”

“People who are going to want to know what’s really going on,” Sebastian added.

Then they turned as one and walked away, side by side, their steps perfectly matched.

“I bet they’re going to meet those people right now,” Kevin said acerbically. “Get them to start asking questions.”

The theory sent a chill right through me. I remembered far too vividly what Tristan had told me about the last angry mob that had formed on Juniper Landing. It wasn’t something I wanted to experience firsthand.

“Why has the mayor not wiped their memories yet?” Fisher asked.

“She tried,” Joaquin informed us. “They refused to be alone in a room with her, and she couldn’t have Dorn subdue them, because there were other visitors waiting to speak with her.”

“God, I can’t take the freaking crowds anymore,” Pete said through his teeth.

“I know,” I said, squeezing his arm as the twins turned the corner at the end of the block. “Especially people like them.”

Bea rocked back and forth from her heels to her toes. “I just want one thing to go back to normal around here. Just one thing.”

The wind whistled in answer, spraying us sideways with a torrent of rain. I wiped my face with the back of my wet sleeve.

“Look, if we can just find Tristan and Nadia, we can have
everything
back to normal by the end of the night,” I said, glancing hopefully up at the dripping gutters on the gray house. “Once we start ushering people again and the sun comes out, everyone will chill. Even the twins.”

Joaquin blew out a breath, his nostrils wide. “Let’s get this over with.”

He hurried up the gray house’s front walk and tried the door, the rest of us following close behind. It was unlocked, as most houses in Juniper Landing were. Slowly he opened the door and peeked inside. There were no lights on in the parlor or the dining room, but I could see a soft glow flickering from one of the rooms at the top of the stairs.

My heart skipped. Joaquin lifted one finger to his lips, then ever so carefully stepped inside. I tiptoed in after him, followed by Fisher, then Bea, Lauren, Kevin, Cori, and Pete, who was bringing up the rear. I noticed that he’d left the door open, which was quick thinking. The click of the latch might alert whoever was upstairs.

Tristan. Please, please let it be Tristan.

Joaquin brought his boot down on the first step. It creaked so loud I almost screamed in frustration.

“Stay to the side!” Lauren hissed. “Steps are sturdier at the side.”

Joaquin nodded, looking green, and pressed himself up against the peeling wallpaper along the stairway. I held my breath as I crept just behind him, each step an excruciating eternity. My eyes were trained on the front bedroom door. The door to the room where Tristan had spied on me during those days after we’d first arrived—the room where he’d taken me on my first Lifer tour, when I’d tried to kiss him, and he’d broken my heart.

Temporarily. Because he’d felt he had to. Now I wished he’d just left it broken back then. It would have started healing by now.

We’d reached the top of the stairs. Joaquin and I locked eyes, and I saw the determination in his. Suddenly I felt weak and childish and stupid. This was not about how Tristan had betrayed me. It was about Darcy and Dad and Aaron and Jennifer and the other innocent souls suffering needlessly in the Shadowlands. It was time to get them back.

“Screw this,” I said under my breath.

Then I turned and threw open the door, the others right on my heels. The curtains were drawn. The room was lit by two kerosene lanterns and one small candle. The first thing I saw by their uncertain light was Tristan, passed out diagonally across two sleeping bags on the floor. I lost my breath at the sight of him. He was on his back in a black T-shirt, one arm stretched out at his side, the other crooked awkwardly over his chest with a bandage wrapped around his hand. His legs were splayed in dirty, wet jeans. A hank of his blond hair fell across his forehead like a crescent moon.

He was here. He was really here.

And I didn’t know what to do. Laugh? Cry? Scream?

Fisher pushed past me into the room. “Tristan!” He thundered, kicking his booted foot.

Tristan groaned and rolled on his side. That was when we saw the blood. It was everywhere. A thick pool of it, dark as oil, spreading out from behind his head. My hands flew to cover my mouth. Cori, meanwhile, crept along the front of the room as if looking for something, keeping her back to the wall.

“Tristan?” Bea gasped, falling to her knees.

She tentatively touched his head, and the color drained from her cheeks. “It’s bad, you guys. His whole skull…”

She turned away, swallowing hard, then got up and staggered to the window, ripping the curtains aside and heaving for breath.

“Who would do this? Who would come in here and attack him?” I asked.

Then, suddenly, Cori screamed.

“What the—”

“Nadia! It’s Nadia!” Cori was pointing at the floor near the back of the room, shaking. “She’s not breathing, you guys! I don’t think she’s breathing.”

I grabbed a lantern and rushed over to Cori’s side. The first thing I saw were Nadia’s black Converse, twisted over each other. My eyes traveled up her skinny legs, her flat torso, up her neck to her face. I gasped and took a step back. Her eyes were open and staring. Not blinking. There was no life in them.

“No, no, no,” Joaquin said, joining us. “That’s not possible. She’s just screwing with us.”

He crouched next to Nadia’s body and put his fingers to her neck. His brows knit and he moved his fingers. Then he moved them again. His hand trembled. When his gaze flicked up to meet mine, I could tell he didn’t want to speak.

“What?” Bea croaked from the far corner, hugging herself. “What, Joaquin?”

“There’s no pulse,” Joaquin said, surprised. “Cori’s right. Nadia’s dead.”

Cori wailed and buried her face in Fisher’s shoulder. Lauren buckled backward, staggering until she collided with the wall, where she sank to the floor, straggly strands of her wet hair snagging on tears in the ancient wallpaper.

“I don’t understand,” I said. We were supposed to be immortal. That was the deal. “If a Lifer dies, where does their soul go?”

No one answered, because there was no answer. This had never happened before. Not in anyone’s memory. Ice-cold fear permeated the room, trembling the air around us, turning eyes wide and jaws slack. Where had Nadia gone? Where would any of us go?

“Please…”

Tristan. His eyes were still closed, but his fingertips clawed at the dusty floor, curling in toward his palm. He groaned and my knees buckled. I threw myself onto the worn throw rug next to him, my heart wrenched inside my throat.

“Tristan?”

I put my hand on his shoulder. He felt cold—impossibly cold—and I could feel the muscles quivering beneath his skin.

“Help…” he muttered, the words a half wheeze. “Help
us.”

And then his body went slack.

“We have to get him out of here!” I exclaimed, looking at the frightened faces around me. “We have to get him to the mayor or…or a doctor. Something.”

“What about Nadia?” Cori cried. “We can’t just leave her here.”

“I can carry Nadia over my shoulder,” Fisher said, his green eyes flat.

“You can?” Cori asked.

“Fireman’s lift. She weighs, like, nothing.” Then, to prove his point, Fisher walked over and lifted Nadia’s limp body, folding her over his shoulder. Cori gasped and started to sob. Nadia’s Lifer bracelet dangled from her skinny arm like it wanted to fall.

“I’ll help you with Tristan,” Bea offered, pushing away from the window and stepping up to Joaquin.

Tristan let out a weak, gurgly moan.

“We have to move,” Joaquin said. “We can’t let him…”

“Die.” Lauren spoke for the first time in five minutes. She’d been so quiet I’d forgotten she was there, but now she turned her dark eyes up at me and stared, her arms limp like a rag doll’s at her sides. “
Die
is the word you’re looking for.”

No one spoke. No one breathed. This wasn’t something we were ever supposed to face. I crouched down next to Lauren and took her hand. “It’s going to be all right.”

“How?” Her voice went childish as her bottom lip trembled. “How is it?”

I swallowed hard and looked to the others for help. Their faces were blank. A terrified blank. “I don’t know, but the sooner we get them back to the mayor, the sooner we can figure it out. Come on.”

I gripped Lauren’s upper arm and helped her up from the floor. Then Joaquin slid his hands under Tristan’s arms and lifted, letting Tristan’s head loll back against his chest, where it left a smear of blood. Bea grabbed beneath his calves, and Lauren, Cori, and I led the way out the door, down the stairs, and back into the night. The rain was sharp and driven, like tiny pinpricks against my skin.

This was not what I had imagined when we’d come out on this mission. I’d seen myself indignantly spitting questions at Tristan, him hanging his head in shame. I’d seen us gathering at the bridge to free the innocents from the Shadowlands. When we’d driven down here, I’d thought I knew exactly what I was doing. But now I was more confused than ever.

When we got to Tristan’s car, I opened the doors to the back. Bea and Joaquin carefully loaded Tristan onto the seat, laying his head down gingerly.

“We’ll take Nadia in the Jeep,” Fisher suggested.

“There’s not enough room,” Bea said.

“I’ll stay with you guys.” Kevin climbed into the front of the SUV.